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Originally Posted by Stu  What about a policy like New Urbanism though?
New Urbanism would promote general health ( from all the walking and bicycling) and would also foster more tight-knit neighborhoods where you could have more meaningful relationships with the people that live around you.
A well developed social network and good physical health would probably be high on just about everyone's list of what them happy. |
Here, governments don't build houses. Developers do. New Urban is a hot trend here and seems fun. But they are building on land that has never been occupied, or was farm before being developed so the building of them is more practical. But they are still contributing to sub-urban sprawl problem.
The person would still have to take the steps to be friends with the neighbors, walk, ride bikes and socialize. Any well-adjusted human can do all those same things now with little or some effort regardless of where they live.
Are you going to raze current neighborhoods to create New Urban ones? Not practical. Can they support thousands of people in relatively small square footage in inner cities? Not the ones I have seen so far.
I am sensitive to my surroundings and consider myself very happy and social but I don't socialize with my neighbors one bit. They are cool. We just have friends we hang out with that aren't our neighbors. We live in a 1000 acre planned unit development, subdivided into maybe a dozen or more smaller neighborhoods.
Most couples here have kids. Their lives center around their school-aged kids. We don't have kids. Our lives center around partying with, travelling with and hanging out with our friends who don't have kids, have kids 19 and up and can hang out with us too, or have kids that are past college age.
So I don't think changing the neighborhood changes ones happiness levels necessarily. Unless where you were previously sucked wads. But that is still an internal choice.
Jennifer